RTL Belgium

Overview

RTL Belgium is a subsidiary of RTL Group, Europe’s largest commercial broadcasting group. In French-speaking Belgium, this media group is market leader. Every day, over two million people view one of their television channels (RTL-TVi, Club RTL and Plug RTL). In addition, the radio stations Bel RTL and Radio Contact reach almost 600,000 listeners each per day. RTL has also launched some web projects, such as the online radio mint.be and the news site RTLinfo.be, attracting over 275,000 visitors every day.

The media industry is experiencing an immense digital transformation. In a media company such as RTL Belgium, technology has become an important pillar. Most systems are now partially or entirely digital: recordings, radio, image archive, planning, broadcasting and, of course, supporting services.

Challenges

“Broadcast without IT has become mission impossible,” says Maxime Masset, IT Security Systems Administrator. “IT plays a crucial role in our enterprise. It helps the various departments - from editorial staff to administration - to facilitate their job. It is our job as IT service to offer solutions that meet their needs.“

These new technologies must be innovative, efficient and reliable, but most of all offer safe solutions. IT security is currently one of the major challenges for RTL Belgium’s IT department. Maxime Masset: “Media groups such as RTL Belgium have a big impact and are very visible in our daily lives. So in the last few years, they have increasingly attracted the attention of hackers as an interesting target.

An additional challenge for the IT department is that security is often seen as a financial burden with no added value for the company. Sometimes it is also seen as an obstacle hindering productivity. “We therefore decided it was vital to first demonstrate the importance of security for our computer park. And to find efficient solutions that are as transparent as possible, at a reasonable price”, says Maxime Masset.

"We have implemented the sandbox function via the Deep Discovery Analyzer. This guarantees an even more proactive security, as suspicious files are opened in a completely secured/closed environment."

Maxime Masset,IT Security Systems Administrator, RTL Belgium

Why Trend Micro

The traditional anti-virus solutions were no longer sufficient to resist ransomware attacks. That is why RTL Belgium decided about two years ago to increase IT security, including users’ endpoint devices. Maxime Masset: “Together with Trend Micro, we have looked for the best possible solution. We have been working with Trend Micro for a number of years because of their professionalism and the quality of their solutions. This has led to a relationship of trust in which they assist us with advice.”

"This is undoubtedly the biggest advantage of the collaboration with Trend Micro. Right now, we block up to 20 threats each month thanks to the sandbox, and fifty more thanks to OfficeScan. The sandbox allows us to block attacks before they reach the endpoint computers."

Maxime Masset,IT Security Systems Administrator, RTL Belgium

Solution

Initially, RTL Belgium decided to upgrade the previously implemented Trend Micro OfficeScan solution to the most recent version (11.0). The advantages of this version: it offers ‘behavior monitoring’ and integrates machine learning, allowing the IT team to close potential security gaps and counter ransomware attacks for all types of user activities and all endpoints. Machine learning also allows the system to continue to learn, to adapt continuously and to automatically share threat information with your entire environment.

“Last year, we have implemented the sandbox function via the Deep Discovery Analyzer. This guarantees an even more proactive security, as suspicious files are opened in a completely secured/closed environment to observe their behavior before they are forwarded to the recipient over our network”, says Maxime Masset. The combination of all these security solutions (TrendMicro Officescan, TrendMicro Deep Discovery Analyzer and TrendMicro Scan Mail Exchange) provides RTL Belgium with a homogeneous and optimal protection.

"We are happy to have chosen Trend Micro as a security partner. Today, our users can work in a protected environment, efficiently and without fear. We experience hardly any delay despite the greatly improved security."

Maxime Masset,IT Security Systems Administrator, RTL Belgium

Results

From the upgrade of OfficeScan and the installation of the sandbox solution onwards, no ransomware attack has been successful. “This is undoubtedly the biggest advantage of the collaboration with Trend Micro. Right now, we block up to 20 threats each month thanks to the sandbox, and fifty more thanks to OfficeScan. The sandbox allows us to block attacks before they reach the endpoint computers.”

The IT team also enjoys a better overview through monitoring and can benefit from a detailed report of all actions taken by the Trend Micro solutions. Using Trend Micro, the IT department can manage and secure the computer park from a centralized management console with a centralized view of the blocked threats.

“We are happy to have chosen Trend Micro as a security partner. Today, our users can work in a protected environment, efficiently and without fear. We experience hardly any delay despite the greatly improved security”, Maxime Masset concludes.